Digital photography has grown in popularity due to a rapid improvement in technology and affordability of equipment. Sensors used to take digital images have improved resolution thus allowing the capture of more details and nuances previously only available through traditional film cameras. The storage devices for these digital images have also improved and now can hold higher resolution images in the smaller spaces as required to fit in the digital cameras. Despite these and other improvements, the high demand and availability of digital photography equipment and storage devices have also driven costs down. Consequently, higher end digital cameras are available not only for professionals but also for many non-professional consumer enthusiasts or “prosumers”.
Image processing software and equipment is an important part of digital photography. Software allows the photographer to visualize the images and perform various touch-up modifications to improve their aesthetic and visual qualities. Accordingly, the quality of the image processing software and equipment is as important as the quality of the digital camera used in taking the pictures.
This software is typically loaded on a computer along with the images from the camera however it is also possible that some of the image processing routines are built into the camera or image capture device itself. The more sophisticated image processing software also targets certain colorspaces for one or more printer or output devices to accommodate for the particular dyes, inks or toner intensities peculiar to the printing equipment. Together, the image processing software and equipment allow the photographer to accommodate for less than perfect photographic conditions, aberrations that may appear in the photographic subject matter or even include special effects in the final images.
Unfortunately, conventional image processing software is complex and difficult to use. The digital photographer needs a deep understanding of the mathematics and color theory to manipulate the images and their various qualities. For example, histograms representing the frequency of colors and/or grayscale intensities in an image provide a statistical view of the image but do not give the photographer insight to the image.
At best, the current image processing tools provide an indirect approach to modifying digital images. They disconnect the photographer from enhancing the images and leave them instead to manipulating complex mathematical formulas in hope of improving the image quality. Consequently, it is quite difficult to develop an intuition for digital photography with current image processing software and equipment.